The Proprietor's Daughter

The Eagles family saga ponderously continues with the dizzying accomplishments of daughter Katherine. At 26, she is a mother of two, the wife of a German millionaire and a brilliant columnist for her father's newspaper, the Eagle. Even after her husband's suicide, Katherine continues her crusade of exposing evil via her timely columns. Helped by real-estate tycoon John Saxon she tracks down landlords who harass their tenants and, at great personal risk, attempts to stifle the rhetoric of the neo-Nazi British Patriotic Society. Saxon's top-level connections with both the developers and the Neo-Nazis occasionally arouse Katherine's suspicions, but since these same connections provide her with information, she casts doubts aside. When nudged by a fellow reporter, however, she begins to look more closely at Saxon's affairs, which, of course, do not bear scrutiny. Filled though it is with corruption and murder, with high finance and high fashion, the book never takes off. Orde (The Lion's Way, Heritage) describes rather than evokes, provides the requisite number of sex scenes, records Katherine's love for husband and children, supplies her with designer gowns and foreign cars, but never turns her into a woman. (August)